Colliding Balls

Wouter M. Koolen

2015-09-21

Videos from my Newtonian collision simulator

Introduction

Some years ago I wrote a colliding ball simulator for fully elastic collisions in Newtonian mechanics. It is a discrete event simulator, so it operates by computing the time of the first collision, processing that collision, computing the time of the next collision, processing it, and so on. More information is here.

More recently I decided to generate a few videos of example collision simulations. I figured out how to upload them to Youtube, so here are a few interesting ones. Also, yes, the colour scheme is awful.

First, the droplet impact. There is no viscosity or gravity. Yet it appears to “splash”.

Then, the funnel. Now we see a form of pressure creating a “spray”.

And finally the wrecking ball. The collision generates shock waves that travel faster than the impact front.